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The Nitty Gritties

The baby is sleeping better and the days are gradually lengthening. I can see an end in sight. The threads of this story are coming together, tight and snug, while at the same time the notepad I have open on my desktop continues to accumulate little changes – tone shift here, reordering a scene there, small continuity notes for the next run through – the last one before this goes to betas.

This is my favorite part. I love the nitty gritties: attending to details, tracking whose hand is where and what phase the moon is in and just when to drop that teeny tiny tidbit of important information so it’ll seem organic. I love chopping out words and smoothing sentences and fixing a character’s voice.

This WIP no longer feels like I went out to the backyard and dug up a pile of dirt and just left it there, an untidy mess, but it doesn’t feel quite right yet, either. I’m too close to it right now and don’t know what to think. Part of me is confident that this is the worst thing I have ever written. But part of me recognizes that every WIP at this point is the worst thing I have ever written. So: I don’t know. And I can’t know.

And that’s okay. Worrying about how awful this really is can come later. Right now, I need to keep my head down and write.

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! ominous weather, grievous wounds, and rooftops on fire.

Chapters: 23 chapters out of 32(?) edited

Current word count:

Coffee?: Coffee.

Number of times I’ve listened to that one song while writing this book, according to just the iTunes on my netbook: 128

Random fact of the week: Undyed baby camel yarn is a smooth cream in color. Also, baby camel yarn is a thing that exists.